


Cracks

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo Amnesty Fills [5]
Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Angst, Dark, Drama, Gen, General, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mild to Moderately Descriptive Torture, Psychological Torture, Strong Language, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 21:36:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3304316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucas cracks and cracks and cracks but never completely breaks. Check tags for warnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cracks

“Are there others?”  
  
It’s a natural first question to ask; and the answer is yes, of course there are, but Lucas certainly isn’t about to go rattling off the list as to the best of his knowledge, is he? Unfortunately, they’ve found a rat in their kitchen and are now rather insistent on using him to find the others.  
  
[---]  
  
They teach them to resist torture, of course they do, especially when they’re sending an operative to another country to gather intelligence, where the odds of them being caught and tortured is considerably higher than usual.  
  
But it’s not enough. Lucas realizes that when they strap him down and put that scratchy, foul-smelling fabric over his mouth (eight years from now he’ll wake up and will feel the phantom soreness from where it rubbed against his eyes and lips) and start dumping water over him.  
  
No amount of preparation beforehand can prepare him for drowning over and over and over again, or the agony of the broken bones in his arms as he thrashes against the restraints, or the feeling afterwards when he’s lying in the unnerving stillness of his cell that his body is banged and bruised and _broken_ in every sense of the word.  
  
It is in those moments that the idea of cracking like an egg seems sorely tempting.  
  
But he has his sense of duty, and his pride, and his stubbornness, and his nearly desperate hold onto the idea that Harry is working on this, that everything will be all right soon.  
  
So Lucas holds.  
  
[---]  
  
They ask him about “Sugar Horse”.  
  
At first Lucas thinks that he’s mistranslated that phrase in his head, that maybe it’s some sort of Russian slang or saying that he hasn’t heard of, but no, it’s “Sugar Horse”, and he’s almost darkly amused at just how utterly unaware of it he is. Either Harry’s been keeping secrets or the Russians’ have some bad intel.  
  
But they seem pretty keen on finding out what it is, because he spends seventeen consecutive days choking on nothing with that fucking sack over his mouth, being beaten mercilessly in-between water-boarding sessions because they don’t want him dead just yet.  
  
The true irony, of course, is that Lucas genuinely knows fuck-all about this, and yet it ends up being the most intense torture session that he endures in prison.  
  
He meditates on that when it’s all over, when he’s back in his solitary, silent little cell. Lucas thinks on it, and then starts giggling so ferociously that he has to muffle himself with his hand.  
  
Oh, he’s cracking, cracking nice and pretty, and really, who wouldn’t? How much can a person be asked to endure before they’re permitted to snap?  
  
He curls up on the narrow cot they’ve allowed him and forces his mind to go blank, utterly blank but for one hopeful lie,  
  
_It will be all right. It won’t be forever._  
  
[---]  
  
“Are there others?”  
  
The few he’s aware of scroll through his head as though he’s reading from a list.  
  
“Where are they?”  
  
It’s not like he could tell them, even if he wanted to; his throat is raw, his lungs feel like they’re about to collapse, he couldn’t bloody well tell them anything at this point beyond a few heaved pleas.  
  
“How many are there?”  
  
But after so long (months, months at _least_ ) he’s starting to suspect that it’s a control question because, honestly, they should know by now that he’s not going to answer, if they haven’t bought the idea that he really doesn’t know.  
  
“What are their names?”  
  
And really, it’s not as though by telling them what they want to know that he’ll be accomplishing anything other than delaying the inevitable. They’ll either continue to torture him, or they’ll kill him.  
  
The only thing that’s going to get him out of this is Harry.  
  
If only the man would _hurry_ , because Lucas is tired, and he’s already devised at least four different ways he can end his own life with what little he has available to him in his cell.  
  
[---]  
  
Oleg Darshavin comes.  
  
And somehow everything gets _worse_.  
  
The man is a complex mix of refined sadism and cold, ruthless brutality, and really, Lucas knows he probably tempted fate when he’d dared to think he’d taken everything they could throw at him.  
  
Darshavin’s true cruelty comes not in the electric-shock sessions, or the false execution he made Lucas endure one rainy night, or even in the time he throws gasoline onto Lucas's head and back and lights a match and Lucas is almost breathless with terror; it's never in anything that comes in a stone room filled of nightmares. It comes when they are outside, walking the marshes beside the prison, after a particularly banal conversation about birds that makes Lucas _far_ more relaxed than he should be (Desperation, thy name is too many years in a fucking Russian prison with no one else to talk to).  
  
Darshavin is one of those exceptional people that is _so good_ at reading others, that he finds Lucas’s pressure point, his one source of hope, and proceeds to wring the life out of it.  
  
“Harry is not coming, Lucas.”  
  
Lucas stares at a clump of (what appears to be) moss on the ground and doesn’t respond.  
  
“He is not coming. It has been four years. If he was going to get you out, would he not have done so by now?”  
Lucas lifts his eyes a little higher. There’s a bird perched on a bare little bush nearby. It looks at him, cocks its head. It’s a perky little fucker and he’s stricken with the sudden desire to throw something at it.  
  
“You know how it is, Lucas; he has so much on his plate now. So much he must do, so many people he must manage. While you must certainly come to mind from time to time, do you really think he’s dedicating real manpower to retrieve a man that, for all he knows, has told us everything he knows?”  
  
Lucas still says nothing, keeps his face cautiously blank. He weighs his options, wonders if the pleasure of being a smart-aleck and saying “Well given what I _do_ know and haven’t told you, I can guarantee he doesn’t know I’ve told you anything because it would be obvious by now” will outweigh the inevitable increase in torture-sessions it will undoubtedly yield.  
  
In the end, he keeps his mouth shut.  
  
Because Darshavin is lying, has to be lying, because Harry Pearce looks after his team and Lucas _knows_ , despite the fact that there is some truth in Darshavin’s assessment of Harry’s priorities, that he will not be forgotten. Harry won’t just leave him.  
  
But with every day that passes, the question becomes less of “Will Harry come get me?” and more of “Will I be alive when he does?”  
  
[---]  
  
At several points the answer to that second question nearly becomes “no”, for a lot of reasons other than the external physical and psychological torture that he cares not to revisit.  
  
It’s almost sad, as Darshavin is pulling him down from the makeshift-noose, that the feeling of his lungs burning as they struggle to take in oxygen has become wearily familiar to Lucas.  
  
That he has been denied even the ability to die at a time undecided by his captors evokes a strange set of feelings in him, the most prominent being a sense of creeping madness, the idea that no, really, there is no escape from this, he will suffer until they make the decision to kill him, and honestly, how much longer are they going to toy with him? How long until they’re as sick of this dance as he is?  
  
And they must be getting at least a little sick of it, because over time the interrogation sessions grow further and further apart until Lucas genuinely can’t predict when they’ll occur at any given time.  
  
[---]  
  
The questions, however, maintain the same theme they have over the duration of his stay:  
  
“Are there other British agents in Russia?”  
  
“What is Sugar Horse?”  
  
“What intelligence have you taken during your time here?”  
  
“Who has aided you?”  
  
“Where are they?”  
  
Over and over and over and over, and always with the sound of Lucas’s screams and cries in the background, never truly drowning the interrogator’s voice out.  
  
[---]  
  
Against his will, Lucas starts to resent Harry.  
  
He fights it, fights it hard, tries to cling to the idea that Harry couldn’t, _wouldn’t_ abandon him, but he’s certain that after so many years he’s probably not getting out (alive) and that Harry isn’t going to swoop in and save him.  
  
Part of it is Darshavin’s work, of course; planting the seed and letting it grow in Lucas’s weary mind.  
  
Part of it is the cold bitterness with which Lucas has come to accept that he is never going home again; he will die, and he hates everything and everyone for that, including Harry.  
  
And part of it, part of it is the simple fact that he put every bit of his remaining hope and faith into the idea that Harry had his back, that Harry cared for his own, that Harry wouldn’t leave him like this.  
  
It hurts so very, very badly to be wrong.  
  
[---]  
  
They try to turn him.  
  
They must, Lucas thinks, believe that they’ve made some headway with him in the time he’s been there, because there’s no way they would have even bothered with that approach if they thought his loyalties were still strong.  
  
That’s the trouble with turning someone, you see: You can’t tell a man, especially one such as Lucas who has virtually no other options, that he has the choice to turn spy against his own country, because what else will he do but agree and use the chance to escape?  
  
That, he thinks, must be Arkady Kachimov (who visits every now and then, and is the only person Lucas knows won’t try to hurt him) and Oleg Darshavin’s mistake; they think they’ve actually managed to ingrain the idea that Harry has left him for a prolonged torture and death sentence deep enough into Lucas’s mind that he might actually consider turning against his country.  
  
That’s not happening, of course, however much resentment he has towards Harry now, whether it’s his own or manufactured. He’s not that far gone.  
  
Not yet.  
  
[---]  
  
After another few months, Lucas agrees to spy for them.  
  
He’s shitting them, to be sure, because it can’t hurt and it can’t harm and, to be perfectly frank, he still doesn’t have any reason to suspect that he’s going back to England (or anywhere else) anytime soon.  
  
[---]  
  
“We are taking a trip, Lucas.”  
  
Lucas almost rolls his eyes at that.  
  
Since Darshavin’s arrival there have been four mock-executions. They were spread out far enough to make them believable- or at least, the first three were. The fourth had been not too long before his second suicide attempt (that time with a piece of jagged metal broken off the edge of his cot, he has a very recent tattoo on his right wrist that covers the scar), and Lucas had honestly not given a shit if they meant to kill him that night. He had assumed afterwards that Darshavin had caught the hint that death couldn’t frighten him anymore.  
  
Apparently not, because this how mock execution number three went: The others had been a violent assault, dragging him from his cell at night with a bag over his head, but the third had been a polite escort to the outer wall of the prison where he’d been faced with a firing squad.  
  
Except that instead of going to the wall, they put a bag over Lucas’s head and then put him in a vehicle (probably a van, given how high he had to step to get in) where it is painfully, stiflingly, unnervingly silent. Whatever this is, he wasn’t expecting it.  
  
It occurs to him then that maybe this might be an actual execution, and it’s as though he’s swallowed a chunk of ice.  
  
But that theory only lasts as long as the remainder of the ride, because then he’s pulled from the van and there’s pavement beneath his feet, and then he’s led up a long flight of stairs into… Well hell, it seems to be an airplane. Lucas only gets confirmation once he sits down and feels the plane take off.  
  
He thinks about the last few months, being briefed about the sort of things he would have to do back in England, playing along like an adult plays along with a child’s make-believe fantasy.  
  
He had been certain they were playing him. Certain of it. Trying to get him to slip up so that they could get the information they’ve wanted from him for so long. There have been too many mind-games, too many falsehoods, too many crushed hopes for Lucas to believe that something _good_ is finally happening to him.  
  
_Are they taking me…?_  
  
_Am I going…?_  
  
He shuts that line of thought down instantly. Because if he’s wrong, if he raises his hopes only to have them beat down again, it will be the end of him. He’ll bash his head against the ground until his skull cracks but by God he will _not_ continue on as he has been. He just fucking can’t.  
  
[---]  
  
Another vehicle in another place, he can tell they were on a private plane or jet because they never arrive in an airport and he has no bloody idea what country they’re in- he’s fairly certain it’s not Russia, unless they’ve dragged him out to a different prison very, very far east because the ride was too long too have gone that far west and still be in Eastern Europe.  
  
Lucas’s hands start shaking when the car comes to a stop, and they continue shaking as the bag is pulled off and his breath stops when he realizes that it’s Harry, Harry and two other fellows he doesn’t recognize about ten feet away.  
  
It’s a prisoner exchange. Lucas trades places with the other fellow ( _Have fun_ , he thinks, cruelly, because he can only imagine the sort of debriefing that fellow is going to get), and walks up to Harry. For that moment, whatever resentment he’s built up retreats to the back of his mind.  
  
“Hello, Harry.” Lucas says, and he doesn’t know if he wants to cry, scream, or pass out. Maybe all three.  
  
“Welcome home, Lucas,” Harry says, and it sounds genuine. “How are you feeling?”  
  
“Fine, good…” Lucas says, and his tone is easy, too easy, maybe a little on the hysterical side? He can’t tell. “Cold.”  
  
But Harry’s perceptive, always has been and always will be, and Lucas sees in his eyes a flicker of a shadow that tells him that Harry senses, Harry knows, Harry _sees_ the cracks in Lucas’s body, his mind, his heart. He won’t trust him in the days to come, may not ever trust him again.  
  
Lucas is back on English soil.  
  
He is not home.  
  
-End

**Author's Note:**

> Whoo. Just started watching this show recently (I’m checking out a lot of stuff the Hobbit actors have been in to see if anything catches my interest) and yeah, it’s good, absolutely recommend. Ros Myers and Lucas are tied for my favorites, closely followed by… Everyone else. Seriously. Awesome characters.
> 
> (That being said I haven’t watched Seasons 9 and 10 yet and I’m led to believe from a discussion I saw that some bits of this story may not be entirely accurate as a result, so idk keep it in mind).


End file.
